The Devastation Diaries
by Wasuremono
Summary: Ten years ago, Earth's chosen heroes fell, and Giygas and his armies destroyed civilization. Now, a few scattered survivors try to eke out a life in the ruins of Earth. In this dying world, is there any hope of salvation?
1. The End of Summer

**Chapter One: The End of Summer**

The sun rose red on Onett. In the first few minutes of dawn, it was a gentle pink, but as the sun moved from the horizon into the dirty cloud cover of the morning, the pollution painted it the rusty color of old blood, reflecting dimly onto the dead grass. By midday, thought Tracy as she watched out the window, it might be crimson - or it might be gone, if the gathering clouds turned into rain. They were certainly dark enough, the angry brown-grey that heralded a day she'd have to put up the tarp and huddle inside.

Tracy had watched all too many of these sunrises. Some mornings, in the fuzz that always followed a bad night's sleep, it was hard for her to remember that things hadn't always been this way: that she'd loved rain once, or that she'd ever slept well. Her dreams were getting worse, incoherent flashes of childhood haunting her, and even the nights without them were restless. She wanted to kid herself and pretend it was just the autumn coming on, but she knew better than that. The chill was in her mind, not the weather.

But this wasn't getting her anywhere. Tracy stood up, crossing the single room of the house and unrolling the tarp to cover the gaping hole that had once been the north wall. It wasn't a great solution, but they'd hung enough hooks that it kept the rain out, and there wasn't much else they could do with the place in the shape it was in. Thinking of it again, she had to swallow a harsh chuckle; as a kid, she'd spent days playing house in this place, back when it had just been the abandoned shack on Beak's Point. Who could have imagined she'd spend years living here? That it'd be the safest place left in Onett, and one of the most intact?

A groan from the bedroll told her that Picky was waking up, and once Tracy secured the final hook, she turned to check on him. Picky was half-upright on the bed, watching her with eyes sunken into his ever-gaunter face, skin dry and jaundiced. "Hey," he said, voice weak and raspy. "Morning, Trace."

"Morning, Picky," Tracy replied, trying to put a smile on. It was so hard to see him this way, withering away before her eyes; he looked even worse than yesterday, and they both knew it couldn't be long now. They'd watched his mother die of the wasting, and they'd known what was coming from the day he'd started coughing, almost two years ago now. The wasting had taken most of the survivors of the initial attacks, and soon it'd be Picky's turn.

"It looks like rain outside," Tracy continued. "I was just putting up the tarp. Looks like I won't be able to go out foraging, but I think we'll be able to live on our stocks for a while. Are you hungry?"

"I could eat," says Picky, with the smile that he always wore when he was humoring her. Between the weakness and the nausea, Picky'd barely been eating for weeks, and Tracy knew he'd probably give up the fight soon, but as long as he wanted to try holding on, she'd help. "Do we have any fruit left?"

"I think we have a can or two." Tracy crossed the room back towards their storage rack. They still had a dozen cans or so of food from the last few foraging runs: enough to feed them for a week, at least. It was the one advantage of living in Onett now, she thought grimly. So many had died in the initial attacks, and so many had caught the wasting afterwards, that the supply stores were still holding out surprisingly well. Between the grocery stores and the Escargo Express warehouse, Tracy would probably be able to scrape along for a few years here - maybe longer, she thought, since soon she'd only be feeding herself.

She hated thinking that way, calculating everything in terms of every day that she might be able to stay alive, but she was almost used to it by now. And once Picky was gone, wouldn't that be what living would become? Surviving for no better reason than simple animal drive?

At last, as she shifted a can of beans to the side, the still-bright orange of a can of peaches caught her attention and let her return to the present. "Here we go! Can of peaches," she said, as brightly as she could, and she grabbed the can opener. "Sounds good?"

"Sounds great," replied Picky. "Peaches? Really?"

"Unless the can's lying."

"Peaches sound wonderful," he echoed, voice wistful now. "You remember the time you came over to my house for dinner, and Mom made peach cobbler? It was great. Even Pokey liked it, and Pokey never liked anything Mom cooked."

"Yeah, I remember that." It hadn't rung any bells at first, but as Tracy thought about it, the evening snapped back with frightening clarity. She'd been eight years old, and the Minches had done everything in their power to pretend to be a happy family around her; with the rough edges of the memory worn off by age, all she could remember now of the dinner conversation was Mr. Minch laughing too hard and Pokey looking at her like she was some kind of strange, exotic insect. The dinner itself hadn't been anything to write home about, but that cobbler had come out, and - well, it hadn't been any better than anything her own mother could have made, but Mrs. Minch was so proud, and that pride made it taste magical. Picky'd been delighted, even then; now, with the darkness closing in, was it any wonder he was clinging to better days?

"It was great, Trace," said Picky. "Just great. I... I miss them, you know? Mom, and Dad, and even Pokey. I think about them a lot. I wonder where Dad and Pokey ended up."

No doubt they were as dead as the rest, but Tracy couldn't bear to admit it. "Who knows? Your dad was a smart guy; he probably found somewhere to hide out. And Pokey was always in his own world anyway. Heck, I wouldn't be surprised if he came back here one day, just like he always was, looking for Ne-"

Halfway through the name, Tracy choked, heart and bile rising into her throat. God, she still couldn't say his name. Ness: her big brother, her idol, the bravest boy she'd ever known, the boy who'd headed out to face down the Sharks and ended up on Giygas's trail. The boy who'd died like an ant somewhere out there, and who'd made Onett one of the biggest targets when Giygas decided to unload all his artillery. Some days she hated him, but most days she just missed him.

"Ne...?" Picky stared at her for a moment, and then the light came on in his eyes. "Oh. Oh, I'm sorry, Trace. It's hard some days, isn't it? Even now."

"It's stupid," murmured Tracy, with a small shake of her head. It was ten years since G-Day, for God's sake! Ten long and thankless years, three of them with Lardna and seven on their own, living hand to mouth. After all that, how could she still be such a child?

"It's not stupid!" Picky paused. "Look, Trace, there's something I want to ask you."

"What is it?"

"Will you promise me something?"

"Anything," said Tracy quickly, without a moment's thought. Whatever he wanted, if she could give it, it was his.

"After I'm gone," began Picky, "promise me you'll go find other survivors? Maybe there are some in Twoson, or maybe further east, but... please try? I can't bear the thought of you alone here."

Slowly, Tracy nodded, swallowing hard to clear her throat. A time like this, and he was thinking about her? "Of course. I can't promise I'll find anyone, but I'll promise I'll go look."

"Thanks, Trace. That's all I can ask." Picky brightened a shade, staring down at the can of peaches in Tracy's hand, the can she'd more or less forgotten. "But we should eat, huh?"

"We should." Tracy shifted closer to Picky, spearing a peach section on her fork and leaning forward to offer it. With a small grunt, Picky leaned in to meet her, taking the peach in his mouth and chewing slowly and carefully. "Well?" she said once he'd swallowed. "How is it?"

"'s good. You have some too? I know I won't finish the can."

He wasn't likely to finish more than three mouthfuls, Tracy knew, and she had to admit she could use the strength. She brought out another peach section, taking it in one bite; the flavor was strong, the canned sweetness too concentrated from all the years it had waited to be eaten, but the pure taste of fruit was still there underneath it. How long had it been since she'd indulged in fruit? A season? Longer?

The tarp rattled in a strong draft, and soon the sound of rain began, soft but growing louder; the storm had come. Tracy shrugged it off, spearing another chunk of peach for Picky. They'd have the taste of fruit and the sound of rain, and maybe they'd be able to be happy.

* * *

The rain kept up all day, and Picky was asleep by dusk, when Tracy crawled into bed to join him. She wasn't tired, not really, but the sound of the rain on the roof carried her to sleep surprisingly quickly. Soon, she was standing in the old, bright Onett of her dreams. She and Picky were were children again, standing near the hill on a night too beautiful to believe; the sky was a dark purple-blue and cloudless, filled with more stars than she could ever remember, and the near-full moon cast its soft light on everything. Picky turned to her, and when he spoke, it was his old voice, as clear as if she were really hearing it.

"Tracy, I'm not going to make it through the night."

She opened her mouth to answer, but before she could, Picky shook his head. "We both knew it was coming, and it'll be okay. Whatever's going to happen, I'm ready for it. But it's not really me talking now, you know. It's you, the part of you you don't trust. The part that's like Ness."

"What? Picky, or whoever you are, I'm not a psychic!"

"You're sensitive enough," said Picky, voice grave now. "You've been feeling my death coming, and now you've got another hunch. I want you to bury me on the southern slope of the hill; you'll know the place when you get there. Whatever you find while you're digging, keep it after I'm buried. Okay?"

"Okay," said Tracy, blinking hard and trying to wake herself up, but she wasn't quite lucid enough to manage it. "But... if I'm really a psychic, won't the robots come after me?"

"They haven't yet, Tracy. Please, trust yourself? Bury me, find what you need to find, and then go searching for others. You can be the key. You can."

"I - I don't understand -"

"You don't need to right now. You'll understand later. Right now, it's time to wake up."

With that, the cool night around her dissolved into the familiar chill of the house on rainy nights, and Tracy's eyes opened on the darkness. The storm had stopped at last, and the room was silent save for the ever-present distant sound of the sea and their breathing, hers near-silent and Picky's more ragged. Tracy shifted slightly to look at him, and thankfully he didn't stir, sleep deep and shockingly peaceful. If this dream came true - and Tracy's dreams came true more often than she liked - she hoped he didn't wake up.

Breathing shallowly, Tracy curled up to help stave off the cold as she watched Picky's chest rise and fall. Too soon, she knew, it would fall for the past time.

* * *

The dream was right: when the time came, she knew the place to dig.

With the body slung over her back, it was a long walk from Beak's Point to the northern outskirts of Onett, and Tracy was grateful when she reached the hill. Once she'd carefully set down her burden, she started towards the south slope, waiting for some kind of sign. It was madness to indulge her delusions this way, but the dream had been right about Picky, and what was the harm of following it now? The important part was over, anyway.

The sign of the right spot wasn't visual, just a feeling: a dull hum in the back of her mind, telling her to stop and dig. Tracy unholstered the old shovel from her back and set to digging, grateful that the rains had loosened the hard-packed soil of the hill. In dry weather, it might have been impossible to make any progress, but now the digging was steady enough, if still slow work.

She was over a yard down when her shovel hit something hard. Tracy knelt down in the muck, catching a glimpse of something glinting, and reached down to close her hand around it. She pulled her hand out, opening it to find her prize: a stone just the size to fit in her palm, muddy but with a hint of grey underneath. After she cleaned it off on her shirt, the stone shone a dull silver, like polished granite.

And then the song began.

It was crazy, she knew, bt she could hear it in her head: a simple melody, a few high notes that echoed in her head as if played on a far-away piano. Maybe she was hallucinating, or just remembering a song from a happier time, but it was clear and brilliant, and as she rubbed the stone, it got louder.

What was this thing, anyway? Some form of psychoactive shrapnel from the war, or something older than that? Tracy had no idea, but she could tell it was valuable, and its weight in her hand and song in her head felt decidedly right, if very strange. Still, the fact that it resonated in her mind made her wonder. She didn't want to think about the possibility that the dream might have been right, that she was psychic on some level, but the dream had been right about everything else. What could she do?

For right now, she could lay Picky to rest. Tracy stuck the stone into her pocket, the song in her head dwindling to silence, and then hefted the body once again. It wasn't the deepest grave, but there weren't scavengers these days, and he'd be safe here. The body was too light, wrapped in the soft, worn fabric of one of the Minches' old bedsheets, the nicest thing that she could spare - not nice enough for him, but nothing was now. Tracy knelt to lower him into the grave; when at last the body hit bottom, she stayed at the edge, finally letting the tears come.

It was dark when Tracy finished the burial, and she walked home in blackness, gaze moving listlessly between the ground and the sky. There was only a sliver of moon there, but the clouds were mostly clear, and the stars shone in their familiar constellations. Giygas couldn't destroy everything.

Giygas hadn't destroyed her. It was cold comfort now, on her first night truly alone, but that fact and her promise to Picky would keep her going. She'd set out tomorrow for the outskirts, but for now, she needed sleep.

For once, she wasn't afraid of her dreams.


	2. Hunters in Darkness

**Chapter Two: Hunters in Darkness**

It was midnight, and it was good hunting.

Urrzech chuffed as he narrowed in on his target: one of the cave-dwellers, young and wandering away from home. It would be a good night's hunt, if perhaps too short, and he'd at last be able to report back to the chieftain with a victory. The prey had gotten thin here, with the humans hiding in the abandoned base and the cave-dwellers keeping to their hills; nonetheless, they would take what heads they could, in hopes of being called home. Urrzech was barely holding onto his rank as stood, and a dead cave-dweller would be an edge over his castemates.

He stalked across the snowfields, louder than he had to be, waiting for the cave-dweller to take notice of him. When it did at last, it made one of its wonderful noises and began to run. Urrzech kept pace for now, not wanting this to end too soon. He could already sense the creature's fear, its confusion -

And then the ground hum started, long and low, and the creature wasn't the only one confused. Urrzech whirled towards the source of the noise, which had been joined by heavy footsteps in the snow. The thing standing before him was a Starman, or had been; between the dead psychic frequency, the cracks in its mask, and that low hum, he was certain it wasn't a Starman any longer. And then, in one terrible moment, he knew what it was.

Before he could run, the ex-Starman's arms split open, shooting metallic tentacles towards him to catch his arms. Those were Octobot tentacles! This had to be the Buzzing One, that cannibal, that traitor - but he couldn't think, not now that the thing was grappling him. Urrzech fired a beam, managing a solid blow on the Buzzing One's chest even as it pulled him in, but the beast didn't even respond; its strength was beastly, and Urrzech was helpless to slow its progress.

The Buzzing One pulled him in close, bringing one of its knees up to strike him hard in the gut. Urrzech wheezed, trying to force himself to concentrate now. If he could just get one minute to think... But then the Buzzing One squeezed him again, harder, and he made a sad whine out of sheer reflex. Then, incredibly, the pressure released, and the Buzzing One took a step back from him. A chance! Urrzech summoned all his will even as the Buzzing One began to lift its leg up -

Urrzech called his PSI Flash, and the snowfield erupted in blinding light. The Buzzing One stumbled back, stunned, and Urrzech ran for the treeline. He used all the speed he hadn't used chasing the cave-dweller, his steps lurching and far too loud. The hunt was back on, and if he couldn't get away, he'd be the Buzzing One's trophy tonight.

He threw himself into a hollow between two trees, letting the snow cover him as he lay still. The hum of the Buzzing One grew closer, footsteps crunching in the snow and breaking twigs underfoot, but then it slowly began to grow dimmer; had it given up? Oh, how Urrzech hoped it had given up! The cave-dweller was long gone now, and his night was ruined, but he was far beyond caring. All he wanted was to return to base camp, tell his story to the chieftain with the many apologies he'd no doubt need to avoid demotion, and sleep somewhere safe.

Urrzech trembled, listening to the diminishing hum and waiting for silence.

* * *

It was the silence of triumph.

Buzz Buzz watched as the tiny shape of the Woolly Shambler withdrew into the woods, its footsteps near-silent now. That stealth meant it was running for its life, content just to escape, and not planning on another pass; the Shamblers preferred noise on the hunt, keeping their target off-balance. It was as good as gone.

The Cave Boy it had pursued was gone too, and Buzz Buzz permitted himself a moment of self-satisfaction. Yes, it was a minor victory, but it was still a victory at that, and the thrill of saving someone never got old. Even on the nights of no Giygan activity, just being out to make sure of it was reward enough. He tried to keep his emotions in check about it, but just being the hero, night to night, meant everything.

For a moment, and only a moment, Buzz Buzz allowed himself doubt. In the years he'd been on patrol, they'd eroded and broken what was left of the Giygans. Would there come a day his services wouldn't be needed any longer? He didn't want to think of a future without Buzz Buzz, but every victory brought him closer to it.

No. No, he wasn't going to go that way. This wasn't the time; it had been a good night, and he wasn't going to let any stray thoughts get him down. He had to stay excited! Stay motivated! Buzz Buzz began the long trek back towards base, beginning the nightly cool-down ritual that prepared him mentally to return to himself. Soon he'd be home, and then he could celebrate another night well spent.

"Yes! Brilliant!"

Tony whooped, and Maxwell sighed inwardly as he began undoing the straps on the pilot's chair. He wasn't confident that this level of enthusiasm about the project was actually healthy, particularly not for someone like Tony. Admittedly, it was probably the least self-destructive outlet for him there was, and it kept him sharp for the more theoretical sections of research, but that still didn't reassure him. Nonetheless, Tony was in full triumph mode now, and Maxwell decided to humor him.

His arms now free, Tony slipped his helmet off, and Maxwell wasn't surprised to see him grinning like a fool underneath it. "There we go! That's another Cave Boy safe, and that's another Shambler sent back home to cry about it. One more victory for Project Buzz Buzz!"

Maxwell had to admit that some of that bravado was on-target. Since they'd built the Buzz Buzz drone and started piloting it remotely to patrol the area around the Stonehenge base, the attacks from roving Shamblers and robots had dropped off. They were sending their targets home alive, which meant the survivors were telling stories, and presumably that meant the lingering Giygans were aware that the human and Cave Boy survivors weren't soft targets anymore. Maxwell couldn't exactly be sure that the dropoffs were the product of the Buzz Buzz patrols and the attached rumors - after all, the attacks had been decreasing steadily for years - but it was impossible to deny that their pet project was doing something besides just keeping Tony busy.

"It's just great," Tony continued, starting to hit the excited stride he usually took after a successful patrol. "Just great to see those damned things afraid for once. After all we've gone through, we're finally striking back! Makes you feel alive, doesn't it, Maxwell? ... Maxwell?"

Shit. He'd gotten caught thinking again. "Yeah, yeah," he said, trying to make it sound plausible, and Tony's face softened again. "Sorry, was just daydreaming. Not to change the subject, but I was thinking earlier that it might be a good idea to go back to sorting through Dr. Andonuts's old notes and see what else we could find. Buzz Buzz is working great, but we've got to keep moving."

"Keep moving? Onto what?"

iOnto finding ways to survive in this Hellhole,/i thought Maxwell, and then he thought better of it. "Well, I want to do some tinkering with the hydroponic setup. We're starting to see reduced yield, and I want to turn that around." As usual, it was a careful dance of euphemism, especially making it sound unexpected; for the love of God, they'd been feeding the complex for ten years off of a system designed to last three, and it was a miracle they'd even lasted this long. It was month-to-month now, sometimes week-to-week, and if they didn't pull the mother of all rabbits out of their hats, all the Buzz Buzz project would do would be to ensure they'd have a little peace and quiet while they starved to death.

"Right," said Tony. "We'll have a look at that, and at that other filing cabinet, right? The one with more notes? There's something there about a psychic amplifier that I think we could retrofit into Buzz Buzz. It'll allow for better shows of force, and I think we need that. Ramp up the legend a bit, get them even more scared, you know? If we do it right, we can probably convince the Cave Boys we're worth coming out of hiding to meet, and I bet they'll share enough to help with the food problem, too."

Of course - because, obviously, the Cave Boys weren't just another set of starving, huddled wretches. It was like the old buddy system for bathroom trips, back when he'd gone to summer camp; one boy walking to the latrines would be easy prey for bears or psycho killers, but clearly two boys would just be too much for 'em, right? Still, right now Tony had a hammer, and it was no wonder that every problem facing the complex looked like a nail. Besides, a tiny part of Maxwell suggested, maybe he had a point. If Buzz Buzz could be elevated, somehow, beyond just being an RC toy, maybe there might be something there really meaningful. Maxwell was fairly sure that it wouldn't, that Buzz Buzz would never be much more than Tony's pet revenge project, but he was willing to be proven wrong.

For now, though, he needed sleep; Tony was wired to the gills, but he wasn't, and he'd need to be conscious if they were to make any progress tomorrow. "C'mon," said Maxwell. "Let's get back to quarters. Do you think you'll be able to sleep?"

"I'll read until I crash," replied Tony. "Let's go."

Maxwell nodded and set off down the corridor, Tony close behind. Their steps echoed strangely in the silent metal corridors of the Stonehenge Base labs; all around them, the structure twisted through architecture never designed for humans. They'd never been meant to live here, and with signs of that all around him, it was hard for him to share Tony's optimism. They'd bought ten years of time, and maybe they could still buy more, but this couldn't go on forever.

Oh, well. For now, at least, there was always tomorrow.


	3. Last Will and Testament

**Chapter Three: Last Will and Testament**

The Twoson woods were deathly quiet. Tracy winced with every step, foot falling on a dead branch or pile of desiccated leaves no matter how careful she was; the path that had cut through these woods was nearly gone now, covered with litter from the dead trees. She couldn't see any signs of Giygan patrol - if nothing else, they would have cleared the path a bit - but it never hurt to be stealthy, and right now she was a walking target.

There was a glint of metal in the corner of her eye, and reflexively, Tracy hit the ground spread-eagle, waiting for the loud footsteps of a Starman approach. When no such footsteps came, she dared to breathe again, looking up and trying to get her bearings. The metal she'd seen was off in the woods, well off the path, and whatever it was, it wasn't moving.

Tracy picked herself up off the ground, wiping off the grime of the forest floor, and began to stalk towards the metal object. As she drew closer, she could make out the shape more clearly: a small rocketship made of silvery metal, badly dented by its impact but otherwise intact. Stenciled on it were words in English: "UNSCREW NOSE CONE."

If this was a Giygan trap, it was a damned strange one, and if it wasn't, who knew what could be inside? Carefully, she approached the nose cone of the rocket, grasping it and gently twisting off. Up close, the metal was obviously beginning to corrode, but with time the creaking metal began to turn on its threads, and soon Tracy had the rocket open. Inside was a thick manila envelope, rumpled-looking but apparently undamaged by the passage of time. Tracy reached in to grab it; it was weathered and sealed, and it had a satisfying heft to it. Either someone'd sent the world's longest supersonic love letter, or there was something of real value in here.

Whatever it was, someone'd built a rocket just to get it to Twoson, and the least Tracy could do was read it. She tucked the envelope under her arm, let the nose cone of the rocket drop with a thunk to the forest floor, and headed back towards the path. No use abandoning what she'd come here for, and whatever she had here could be read as easily in Twoson as in Onett.

* * *

As she'd feared, Twoson was a ghost town. The city clearly hadn't been hit as hard as Onett had; perhaps half the buildings were still standing, and the streets were clean, so someone'd kept living here long enough to take care of the corpses. Still, the buildings bore the pockmarks of long neglect, and the air smelled faintly rotten and more than a little musty. Maybe whoever'd survived had been rounded up by the Starmen afterwards, or maybe they'd set out to the greener pastures of the east, but either way, they were gone.

Tracy drifted almost unconsciously towards Burglin Park. As she'd feared but expected, it was a blasted ruin, the green space of her childhood replaced with a maze of fallen trees and destroyed market stalls. Whoever'd survived in Twoson had no doubt declared it as a lost cause, and it was hard to blame them, but for right now it meant privacy without having to break into some dead man's house. She picked her way down the old path, finally finding a clearing big enough to settle down on the worn turf and open the envelope.

The aging tape and glue yielded easily to her hands, and Tracy withdrew the papers inside, dozens of pages of looseleaf covered in crabbed handwriting. This was definitely from a survivor, then: someone who hadn't had access to anything as civilized as a typewriter, and they'd had to make every every line of the paper count. At the top of the first page was a date and salutation - maybe this was a letter after all?

Settling in, Tracy began to read.

* * *

_June 5th, 2006_

_Dear Reader,_

_First of all, I can't say how glad I am that you're reading this. Your possession of this document means that the capsule has safely made landfall and has avoided interception by Giygas's forces. Maybe you're somewhere safe, or maybe it's just been lucky, but either way, now we have hope._

_My name is Loid Trask. I'm 28 years old, and I've been fighting Giygas for nearly all my life. Nearly twenty years ago, my friends and I faced the first wave of attack by Giygas and his forces. We were only children, but he was unprepared for human resistance, and we managed to drive him away from Earth. We settled into normal lives, and none of us expected Giygas to come back, let alone return as swiftly and bloodily as he did._

_His first strike was quick, and it was the one that hurt the most. On their way home from the grocery store, my friends Ninten and Ana were gunned down in the street by a disguised assassin robot; they were dead before they even realized who attacked them, let alone why. It was a crushing loss for all of us. They were both beautiful people, the kindest I'd ever known, and Ninten had been the first to give me a chance. To this day, I'll never know if Giygas killed them first just because they were psychics, and thus the biggest liabilities, or whether he did it just for revenge._

_The invasion forces arrived within weeks of their death, and while the military tried and failed to hold them off, those of us who'd fought Giygas before began forming a resistance. There were only three of us left who knew what we were getting into: me, my friend and comrade-in-arms Teddy, and Pippi, an old friend of Ninten's I'd gone to college with. We'd been dating for a few months before the attack, and she stayed with me even afterwards; I'll never know why, but I'll always be grateful that we had the time we did._

_We fought as hard as we could, but we were badly outnumbered, and Giygas was only getting stronger. While I was mostly working R&D at the beginning, trying to refine our available technology to repel the incursion, I found myself at the front lines more and more often as our forces dwindled. We managed to hold out for nearly seven years, but our death knell came four months ago, when a squad of Starmen found our base. We kept up the fight as long as we could, but they sent wave after wave, and we fell. Teddy was cut down in front of me, and I found Pippi afterwards among the bodies. She'd been telling me every day for years not to expect her home, and finally it came true._

_A few of us managed to escape the base and scattered to the four winds. I found our last secure laboratory facility, less of a base and more of a bolt-hole in the ruins of Ellay, and I've been working alone ever since. At last, though, I've finished the prototype. It's been in the works since long before the second Giygan assault, but I've finally completed the plans for the world's first working time machine._

_It's an extraordinary claim, I know, but it's true. I've included the schematics; the theory is complicated, but the actual assembly shouldn't be too much trouble for anyone with the proper mindset. I sent the schematics and this message in the hopes that someone would retrieve it and be able to put our creation to use. I don't need to tell you how powerful a time machine could be, or just how much we need the chance it might offer. If we find a way to stop Giygas early enough, we might be able to erase this all from history._

_There's one catch: as far as I can tell, this prototype time machine isn't able to handle living tissue, just inanimate objects. I have no reason to believe that I'll survive the first test. I uwill/u test it, though; if it's successful, I'll turn the clock back, and if it's not, then I'd still rather die trying to fight than die on my knees when Giygas's forces find me. Launching this rocket will lead them right to this lab, but for better or for worse, I'll be gone when they arrive. I more or less know it's suicide, but I think Pippi would have wanted it this way._

_Good luck and Godspeed, whoever you are, wherever you may be. Our work, and our story, is in your hands now._

_Sincerely,_  
_Loid Trask_

_

* * *

_

It was a survivor's story, all right. A part of Tracy hated herself for not feeling much more than a dull sense of recognition, but every story these days ran the same. He'd opposed Giygas, and he'd suffered for it; so had her family, and so had the whole world. Loid Trask had obviously been a brave man, and inventive, but he hadn't been special. Besides, if the date at the top and her personal timekeeping efforts were to both be believed, this letter had been written just over three years ago. Whatever had happened, Trask was long gone.

Tracy began to page through the other looseleaf sheets. As promised, they were schematics for something, diagrams and blueprints and pages of calculations and component lists; it washed over her, and she found herself understanding none of it. Could this really be a time machine, or had Trask been crazy? It'd take someone else to say for sure, but even if he was crazy, it was an understandable delusion. A time machine would be the answer to so much.

Assuming, of course, they could figure out how to actually use it. Cutting off Giygas before he could reach his full strength would be a dream come true, but without a plan, a dream was all it was. What would that mean? Going back to Trask's friends and reinforcing them? But if they'd only been kids, they probably couldn't have done much more than they had. Then again, Ness and his friends had only been kids, too. Would saving the world mean convincing the adults something was wrong? Would it mean mobilizing the army? Contacting the President? Now that was a pipe dream; nobody would have believed in Giygas before the arrival of the aliens and the rise of the possessed, and Tracy was fairly sure that, by then, military intervention was probably hopeless.

And yet... and yet, if these notes were right, she held the plans for a working time machine. She couldn't throw that possibility away, could she? Even if she didn't know how to use it now, maybe she'd figure something out. After all, having a time machine meant you had time to think about how to use it, didn't it? And time to figure out how to build it, for that matter.

Tracy slid the papers back into their envelope before standing up, weaving her way back out of Burglin Park. With luck, she'd be home before dark; given how long the rocket had been out unmolested, she was guessing there weren't any Giygan patrols to worry about, but she didn't want to test her luck. For once, she was carrying something she cared about, and it wasn't a day to take risks.

* * *

Tracy awoke to breeze on her face.

Her eyes snapped open, and she tried quickly to get her bearings. Had the tarp come open, or had one of the windows been broken in a storm? No, she realized, with a lurch in her stomach - she wasn't even at home. She was on her feet, in fact, somewhere outside: an old clearing, bare stone and dead scrub surrounded by the dead forest. The wind rattled the husks of the trees, and the sky was the flat grey-black of the hours before dawn.

She reconstructed the past few hours. She'd made it home from Twoson just before dusk, tucked away the envelope, forced down some hardtack and water, and laid down to rest and think. It all got fuzzy then, and she must have dozed off. God, had she sleepwalked here? She hadn't done it since childhood, and even then, it had just been a few nights of crashing through the hallway and frightening her mother. How had she gotten this far from home without so much as a bruished shin?

The comforting weight of the stone was still in her pocket, and she pulled it out on reflex. The stone was surprisingly warm in her hand, more than it should be from her body heat alone, and she could almost swear it was vibrating. Tracy frowned, stepping forward idly, and the stone nearly jumped in her hand. She closed her fist around it, and its song began... and then it built upon itself, a new, strange harmony weaving into the tune. The song was still changing, and soon it was more than a song. Snatches of words -

_- a sanctuary for the chosen of the Earth. Take power from this place -_

Her mother, younger than Tracy had ever known her, rocking a cradle.

_- Draw its strength into the Sound Stone, Chosen -_

Ness out in the yard, throwing a stick to King.

_- first of eight Sanctuaries. Make these places your own._

Tracy stumbled forward, then fell to her knees. At last, in the growing light, she could see where she was: Giant Step, in the mountains north of the city. They'd always said it was a haunted place, but now she understood. It wasn't haunted; it was ipsychic,/i psychic like the stone clutched tight in her hand. The stone had been looking for Ness, and it had found her instead and drawn her here.

And Giant Step was... God, her head was still swimming. A "Sanctuary," waiting for the "Chosen?" Waiting, she knew, for Ness? Even she could feel the power here, restless and masterless, and she could only imagine what Ness might have done with it if he'd had a chance. With this "Sound Stone" to guide him, maybe he could have grown strong enough to fight Giygas possibly. Maybe he could have won.

It all snapped together in her head. She'd wondered about a way to use that time machine, and here it had been in her pocket all along. The Sound Stone could give Ness a fighting chance, and the time machine could get it to him. Maybe it was fate, or maybe it was just good luck, but she had a chance. God help her, she had a chance.

But even with that clarity, her head was still buzzing, and she needed to think. Tracy turned back towards the path south, forcing herself homeward on sore legs. Maybe she had bruised a shin after all; with the adrenaline, it was hard to tell.

* * *

It was after dawn when Tracy got home, and the house was as she left it, undisturbed but troublingly quiet. In the weeks since Picky's death, she still hadn't adjusted to living alone: it wasn't just the company she missed, but the sound of his breathing and the feel of his proximity, the things she'd taken for granted. Now he was gone, and so were all those little comforts. No wonder he'd wanted her to go looking for other survivors; if she lived alone for too long, Tracy feared, madness would come soon enough.

She headed back to her bedroll, closing her eyes and trying not to focus on the cold sheets and the silence around her. Some residue of Giant Step was still humming in her head, and Tracy decided she'd have to try and use it. If this plan had any chance of succeeding, she'd have to try and capture whatever it was that Ness's friend had done so long ago to reach faraway help, project her message out and touch other minds. Whatever latent psychic powers she might have probably weren't enough to reach past the Twoson city limits, but she had to try.

_To anyone who can hear me,_ she began,_ I need your help. I need a scientist or an engineer - someone who can read blueprints and build machines. I'm here in Onett, and I have the schematics for something very important, but I can't build it on my own. If you can, and if you can reach me... _She hesitated, uncertain if she was overstating her case, but she decided what she was about to think wasn't an exaggeration. _We can save the world._

Tracy let her mind and her words drift away from herself, through the night sky and over the cloud layer. How far they were going, she couldn't say; all she'd done was the psychic equivalent of shouting from the rooftops. But sometimes, a shout from the rooftop could be heard, and it was better than sitting on priceless documents and hoping for a miracle, wasn't it?

Tracy was hoping for miracles. She couldn't help it. That was the problem with hope: even the tiniest grain of it wormed under your skin and into your heart. It was toxic. The more she thought about it, though, the more she thought Loid Trask was right. It was better to die hoping than die withering away.

The message felt stable now, and Tracy let it run itself as she began to fade away into sleep. The day had been longer than she'd imagined when she'd set out for Twoson, and the fatigue was beginning to catch up with her, even with the Sound Stone's song still ringing in her mind. Tomorrow, the fight was back on, but now, she needed rest.

For the first time since Picky's death, Tracy slept soundly.


	4. Through the Ether

**Chapter 4: Through the Ether**

"Look, Maxwell, this is awkward, but... have you been hearing voices?"

Maxwell looked up from his notes, frowning at Tony across the table. He wasn't sure which possibility was less comfortable: the idea of having a frank conversation with him about another troubling psychiatric symptom, or the idea of vindicating him. After all, there was the chance this wasn't a delusion, but could he be sure they were hearing the same thing?

Maxwell decided to stay silent and let Tony keep talking; it was a more or less foolproof strategy, and as he shrugged, Tony proved him right once again. "It's been sort of freaky," he said. "I never used to hear voices, I swear, but lately when I go to sleep I've been hearing this woman. It's really faint, but it's a woman's voice, and it's not anybody we know. She's always asking for help. It's something about diagrams? I don't remember exactly what she says, but it's always something very important that she needs help with. Have you, um, does any of that sound familiar? At all?"

All too familiar, thought Maxwell. He'd been having similar dreams on and off for a few months now, and while he was always hazy on most of the details upon waking, the general message seemed identical. It was always a woman's voice, calling from a great distance away, and she always needed some level of expertise; there was some huge task she couldn't handle on her own, although the exact specifications never lingered long. He hated to admit it, but unless he and Tony were succumbing to the same delusions, it wasn't just a mental issue.

"Jeff mentioned something like this once," continued Tony heedlessly. "When he first left. He said he was being called by a friend he'd never met, somewhere in Eagleland. Do you think this could be the same thing? Some kind of psychic distress signal?"

"It seems possible," admitted Maxwell. "I've been getting the same messages, or very similar ones. I don't think either of us is hallucinating, but what do we do about it? Whoever this is, she's far away, and if Jeff could receive something from Eagleland..."

"... Then we're probably dealing with a long journey," finished Tony. "I think we have to hope that that Sky Runner in the lab is still working. Jeff told me that the one he used had some sort of tracking mechanism for finding psychics. If we could get one started, we could go find her and help her!"

Help her with what, though? There was nothing even slightly rational about this. If you played the odds, this was much more likely to be a honey trap planted by a bored Giygan operative than any real psychic distress call, and even if it was, there was no guarantee they could solve whatever the problem was. The woman wanted technical prowess, and while they'd both spent years now troubleshooting in Stonehenge and puzzling out the contents of the Andonuts lab, they weren't nearly professional grade. It was a fool's errand. And yet - if this iwas/i a psychic in trouble and they icould/i help, they'd hit the jackpot. At Stonehenge, they were spinning their wheels, but there might be a worthy project out there.

"Tony," said Maxwell, "I'll be honest. I think we both know there isn't that much of a chance of getting there safely, let alone actually helping, if we follow this signal. Even with that in mind, I'm tempted to do it. I take it you're in?"

"Of course I'm in. Let's go check on a ride."

* * *

While the Sky Runner stashed in one corner of the lab had accumulated its fair share of dust, the initial diagnostics were promising, and Maxwell left Tony to it. As the thing hummed and whirred away in the corner, Maxwell began to sort through the filing cabinets, packing documents into an old attache case. The files for the Buzz Buzz project went first, followed by a general psi-tech dossier, and then a journal article on uses for meteoric metals; he wasn't sure he could justify any of his choices beyond raw intuition, but he wanted as much as he could that might be of use wherever they were going.

After that, it was time to pack the tools and supplies. They'd long ago ransacked most of the lab's consumable components, but he still managed to find and secure a few handfuls of assorted electronic parts; the tools were in better supply, even if they were all beginning to show their age. He couldn't say how lucky they were that the lab had been left relatively unmolested by Giygan forces. Without what was left of Dr. Andonuts's knowledge and technology, how would they have even lived this long?

Once Maxwell had packed a toolbox, he set it down next to the attache case and their duffel bags. It wasn't too much of a load, and hopefully the Sky Runner would have enough luggage capacity to handle it. Maybe he was overpacking, but he figured they'd need everything they could get once they got wherever they were going. He didn't know the first thing about the Sky Runner's fuel supplies, he had a sinking feeling this was going to be a one-way trip, however it turned out.

"Okay!" called Tony, climbing out of the cockpit. "It looks like we're good to go. All the systems are green-lighted, which I think means they're working properly. Um. Did you get everything packed?"

"Everything I could find," replied Maxwell. "I don't know what this mystery woman'll need, but if the lab had it, I packed it. Can you think of anything I might have forgotten?"

"Not really. Just, um, did you have anyone you wanted to say goodbye to? I don't think..."

So it wasn't just him, then. Maxwell nodded. "I said my goodbyes, Tony." And Tony had no goodbyes to say; Maxwell supposed that was one advantage of living in your own head. "Let's get going."

"Got it." Tony grabbed his share of the luggage, stepping into the Sky Runner, and Maxwell picked up his share and followed. At the very back of his brain, a spark of excitement began to fight against the fatalism, but he wasn't sure he was willing to give it purchase. Whatever this trip would bring, he rather doubted it'd be fun.

* * *

In the back of his mind, Maxwell could imagine circumstances where he might have enjoyed the Sky Runner flight. Even with its age and disrepair, the machine flew with all the grace its spherical body could muster. For a single-compartment craft, the ship offered a shockingly smooth ride, and at a better time, Maxwell might have even been able to relax and forget he was in the air.

It was just a shame about the damned view, wasn't it?

It was a cloudy night, and visibility out of the portholes was spotty, but he could still see enough to know he didn't want to see more. Through the dirty clouds, he could dimly make out the great plains of Chommo below them, the grasslands laid waste and slowly being conquered by the ever-encroaching desert. Even in the dim light, he could tell it was all tan on brown, and he couldn't convince himself that the few flashes of green he saw were anything other than a hopeful hallucination. There were a few patches of light from scattered settlements, but for every puddle of electric light, there was a dark, scorched scar in the earth where the Giygans had wiped a city off the map. Half the continent was just gone, burnt nearly beyond recognition, and Chommo had barely resisted Giygas; what in God's name could he have done to the rest of the world?

In the distance, the clouds were broken by a chunk of floating rock - a fragment of Dalaam, Maxwell realized queasily. The cloud kingdom had been hit before the international networks had broken down, and he could still remember the news stories about the bombardment. Time had dulled his memories, thank God, but he'd joined the rest of the dorm in staring, slackjawed, at the television. By the time Giygas had finished with it, Dalaam was a floating graveyard, and Maxwell was grateful that their flight path wouldn't take them any closer to the main ruin.

In the pilot's seat, Tony turned away from his panels for a moment. "We're definitely getting signals from Eagleland," he said. "It's still too far away to narrow it down any more, but we'll be heading west from here, across the ocean. Are you doing okay?"

"Yeah, yeah," replied Maxwell. "Just daydreaming. Good to have the status update, though, and thanks for the smooth ride. How did you figure out how to pilot this thing?"

"Oh, Jeff talked about it once. When we were on the phone after he left. He said it was easy, mostly just autopilot, and it turned out he was right. I had assumed it was just easy for him, but then I got behind the controls, and it was nothing. I guess he inspired me."

He should have known it would come back to Jeff again. Somehow it always did: something Jeff had told Tony in the past, or some inspiration he'd gotten from his memory. God forbid that Tony recognize that he could be competent on his own, let alone that he'd managed to be the best majordomo available from the surviving Winters population. Maxwell knew he should bite his tongue, as he always had, but suddenly he really wasn't in the mood for that. If this was their last trip, this was the time for talking. "Or maybe you're just actually good at it," he said, trying half-heartedly to be gentle. "You know, you've done a lot that didn't really have anything to do with Jeff. I hate to put it in these terms, but do you think he'd appreciate you writing yourself off this way?"

"I don't know," said Tony. "I just - you understand, don't you? Everything I've done, it's been because he would have done it if he'd been the one left. He would have saved us, I know it. I'm just trying to do what he would have."

"But he -" Maxwell thought again, then swallowed his words. It wouldn't have helped, he knew, to say what he was thinking: _but he didn't save us. But he died, along with his friends and his father and everyone who was supposed to be our heroes, and they left us to clean up. You're stronger than he was now, because you're still alive._ "... But he would have wanted you to take your fair share of credit," he continued to try and cover himself.

"Oh, all right," said Tony, sounding faintly relieved at the potential change of subject. "If you say so. - Look out the porthole, though? At the sea? It's gorgeous. Almost looks normal."

Maxwell turned to look. Below them, the sea stretched out, dark and calm, and he had to admit that Tony had a point. That was the advantage of water, he supposed; whatever poison had leeched into it, it remained as tranquil on the surface as it ever had been. If he were better at poetry, he might be able to suggest some sort of metaphor about invisible sickness, but for now it was enough to watch the sea and try not to think about dead fish.

"The signals are intensifying," said Tony, focused again on the control panels. "It's looking like we've got a distinct psychic emanator in western Eagleland, probably in the Onett or Twoson area. We'll probably be making landfall within the hour."

Onett or Twoson? Maxwell knew that Tony didn't have to be lectured about what they were walking into. Hell, he was surprised they weren't glassy plains. The signal coming from western Eagleland didn't exactly reassure him that they weren't going to be greeted by a Starman patrol, but they'd come this far, and it was time to walk into whatever was coming.

"Great," Maxwell replied. "Can't wait."


	5. One Last Sunrise

**Chapter Five: One Last Sunrise**

The night the spaceship arrived, Tracy couldn't sleep. Restlessness had become her constant state of mind since she'd started broadcasting, as if she were waiting for a phone call from an absent friend; even once she realized there'd be no psychic response incoming, no _roger that_ from an unknown friend, she'd still been hoping for some sign of an arrival. When her intuition finally gave a twinge, she stared at the ceiling for nearly an hour before she climbed out of bed to go walking.

She heard the musical tones first, like someone striking a tuning fork, and then she saw their source: a silvery flying craft, a sphere save for a saucer ring around its midsection. It was slowly approaching the ground near what had been the path to town from the suburbs, and as she watched, the craft made a somewhat clumsy but safe landing on the path. The tuning-fork tones cut off, and a door opened, letting a bridge descend.

Tracy watched, trying to swallow her doubts. With a craft like that, had she attracted the attention of some far outpost of Giygans, ready to kill her? But the figures who stepped out were clearly human, and she stepped closer, trying to distinguish their features in the darkness. "Hello?" she ventured.

"Hello? Are you the psychic, ma'am?" One of the humans stepped forward: a red-haired man who might have been stocky before hunger sharpened his features. His companion, a leaner brown-haired man with surprisingly bright eyes, stayed just a step behind him. "Or if you're not, do you know where the psychic might be? We've been getting messages."

"Then you're looking for me," replied Tracy. "I'm glad you heard me. My name's Tracy Wagner, and you two are?"

"Maxwell Labs," said the red-haired man, "and my friend's Tony Sterling. We've traveled from Winters; I guess you could say we're the inheritors of the Andonuts lab. We heard you needed technical help?"

"I do. I found a set of schematics and notes I can't make sense of. The inventor's letter claims that it's a time machine, but -"

"A time machine?" The bright-eyed man, Tony, interjected. "Is it really - er, sorry. Do you have any idea how complete the notes are?"

"They look fairly complete," said Tracy. "In the letter, the inventor said he was going to test a prototype, but I can't say for sure anything else. Like I said, I can't understand them. Uh, why do you ask?"

She must have looked skeptical, because Maxwell shot his companion a look, and Tony winced. "I was meaning to tell you, Maxwell! I, um, I found something in Dr. Andonuts's notes that said it was a time-machine project. They weren't very complete, though, but if she's got a better set..."

"Then we might be in business. Christ, Tony, you need to tell me these things!" Maxwell looked up again, apparently only then remembering Tracy's presence. "Sorry about that. We spend a lot of time together; you forget about other people sometimes. Where were we?"

"There's not much else to say," replied Tracy. "Get your ship secured and come with me? You may as well get some rest tonight. Have you eaten?"

"Not as such," admitted Maxwell.

"Then I'll heat up something. Go ahead?" Tracy stepped back as the men returned to their ship, returning with luggage in hand. Maxwell nodded for her to lead the way, and she set back down the path again. It was strange to walk with someone, she thought, or to think about cooking for someone besides herself again, but it was a good kind of strange. Her call had been answered.

* * *

"God, it makes sense now. All of it."

"Enlighten the rest of us, Tony?" Maxwell set down his chunk of hardtack, watching as his friend paged through the schematics once again. Tracy watched them both from her seat against the west wall, chewing fitfully on her own breakfast but mostly unable to keep her eyes off of them. It had been so long since she'd met anyone new, and they'd come from a less roughly-treated part of the world, to boot; they still had the tired faces of survivors, but there was something about them that suggested they'd eaten more often and rested more safely than anyone in Onett had since G-Day. Tony in particular seemed almost manic, barely pausing from his reading for a moment to gnaw at the hardtack biscuit that served as breakfast. She couldn't blame him, though, if he'd really just learned something.

"Everything we've found," Tony began. "It all fits together. Dr. Andonuts's notes on his time machine had tons of references to Buzz Buzz - er, that is, Tracy, to our remote-control project - and those notes fit in with what's being presented here! The implications that you can't send living people back... it's simple. This guy figured out the machine, right along with Dr. Andonuts, but the Doctor knew how to really use it."

"So what are you saying?" said Maxwell. "That we send drones through the machine?"

"That's the only way. There are some notes here about consciousness transfer; Dr. Andonuts must have had something even better, something that died with him, but we can work with what we've got. That is, depending on what we actually intend to do with this time machine."

Tracy knew this was the time to be frank. They'd trusted her this far, and however crazy her plan sounded, she could hope they'd trust her a little farther. "I need to go back to before G-Day," she began. "There's something I need to give Ness that may give him a chance. Something I found." She reached into her pocket and withdrew the Sound Stone, cracking an involuntary smile as the song began in her head.

"What is it?" said Tony. "Some kind of good-luck charm? I don't quite understand."

"I don't either, but it's an item of power. From what I can tell, it harmonizes with the earth somehow and absorbs power. It called me towards Giant Step once, in the northern hills, and - I can't even tell you what happened there, but I can tell Ness needs to have it."

"Fair enough," replied Maxwell. "It's a far-fetch story, but all of this is, and I don't see any reason not to trust you. Why do you in particular want to go, though? With all due respect, Tony's the experienced pilot here; if anyone's got a chance to successfully send a drone back, it's him."

Tracy paused. "You could go if you wanted to. There's nothing that says I need to make the drop. But... Ness was my brother, and if anyone can make him believe, I think I can. I've been working on a story, something I think he'll accept." She paused again for breath; the men were watching her, stonefaced. "Look, I know it's stupid, but I know my brother. He loved comic books and adventure stories; if I can sell it to him as some sort of prophecy, he'll believe it. I know he can do it, and I know I can convince him to. But I won't stand in the way if you would give us the better chance of success. It's getting this to him that matters."

Slowly, Tony shook his head. "No. You've got a good point. Besides, of course you want to see him again. If I had the chance to go back - if I have the chance somehow, before this is all over - I'd take it. I... I'm sorry. I didn't realize you were his sister."

"I didn't tell you," said Tracy. "It's okay. But you're sure?"

"At the risk of overstepping my boundaries," said Maxwell, "we're both sure. Tony can train you on the drone-piloting protocol while I build the machines. Sound good, Tony?"

"Sounds great. I brought along my miniaturized practice drone and the rig, so we can get started today. You want to?"

"Of course," said Tracy, managing another smile even as she put the stone back into the safety of her pocket. "The sooner started, the sooner done."

* * *

With an actual goal in place, Tracy was surprised how quickly the days went by. After the first few days of acclimation, the house at Beak's Point became a workzone: Maxwell tinkering, Tony teaching, and Tracy learning. In the blink of an eye, it seemed, the spaceship parked in the woods turned into a silver nightmare of dials, plates, and exposed machinery; one day, almost arbitrarily and disarmingly casually, Maxwell announced over breakfast that the prototype was ready for testing. Tracy wasn't sure if she was ready, but the time had come.

They walked together into the woods, and gently, Tony guided her towards the familiar pilot's seat. "Just breathe through it, okay? This probably won't be the final protocol for the real trip, but it'll give you a good feeling for what's coming. You know what to do; just do it like we've always done. Okay?"

"Okay," replied Tracy. "Do you have the test payload loaded into the drone?"

"Right there." Tony gestured at the tiny practice drone, no more than the size of a beetle and dwarfed by the document-carrying tube strapped to its undercarriage. "If it can take these, it can take the stone no problem. Let's get you strapped in and then Maxwell will get the machine going."

Tracy nodded her assent, and Tony began to secure the piloting electrodes. Once the helmet visor went down, she began to focus on her breathing, slow and regular. Gradually, the world around her began to drift away and her consciousness became fuzzier; from there it was a simple matter of nudging it outwards and reaching out for the other anchor. One more exhalation, one more blink -

And she was the drone, lifting off from the ground with the low humming of metal wings. "Great!" called Tony. "Now just go for it. Maxwell, do you have the coordinates set?"

"All set and ready," called Maxwell back. "Whenever you're ready!" He pushed a button on the control panel, and the time machine whirred to life, the gaping void of its central node opening into a vortex of colors. This was it.

She couldn't be more ready.

Tracy flew into the node, and for a moment, all was color and motion; the return to the dull world of her proper senses was jarring. She found herself standing - hovering, she corrected herself - in a dank basement, one it took her a moment to recognize as her mother's. As she took in the details, it all sunk in: the racks of preserves they'd raided after the attack, still fully stocked; Ness's old baseball stuff neatly on its own rack; the whole basement organized, neat, intact. They'd done it. They'd sent her back!

As she began to fly towards her target on the far shelf, she noted with a mental wince that her control seemed to be off; she was more staggering through the air than swooping. She'd talk to Tony about it later, but it'd do for now. Carefully, she made her way towards the cardboard box labeled TRACY'S SCHOOL THINGS. She gently nudged the lid up and off the box, flying in and deploying the automatic release on the document tube. The plastic tube fell with a thump onto the top of the papers. On the whole, it didn't look too out-of-place, even with the DO NOT OPEN UNTIL 2009 on the cover sheet. Tracy hoped her mother would just take it for a time capsule; after all, in a way, that's what it was. The only detail out of place was that she couldn't close the file box again, but surely her mother'd just think she'd left the lid off herself, wouldn't she? Not a problem at all.

This was all a distraction, though, from the yearning to go upstairs. Even if she stayed outside, just looking in the window at her house the way it was, hoping for a peek at Ness or her mother, the thought was irresistible, and yet she knew she couldn't. They couldn't afford to spend the time and energy on her dallying, especially not at this stage.

With one last, regretful glance at the stairs, Tracy made her way back to the faintly glowing circle that signaled her gate home. Passing through it again, she made as clean a landing as she could; the long-distance piloting was starting to take a toll on her own energy, and when she let her grip on the drone slip, her consciousness snapped back into place like an overstrained rubber band. "First things first," she said once she'd gotten her wits about her again. "We need to get a better transfer system. It nearly wore me out just making the drop-off."

Maxwell looked up from his button-pressing. "But you did it?"

"I made the drop. It works."

"Oh, thank God," said Maxwell in one long exhale. "We'll fine-tune now, but we've got it working. I'll get back to work; Tony, you help me out and let Tracy get a nap. Tracy, are you okay to get back to the house on your own?"

"I'll be fine," Tracy replied, standing up and testing her legs. Thankfully, they seemed to be able to handle her weight, and she made her slow way back towards the house. A rest was definitely in order, but so, she decided, was a celebration. She hoped she had some fruit left.

* * *

"Guys, we have a problem. We have a serious problem."

"What is it?" Tracy was accustomed to the urgency in Tony's voice by now, but she wasn't accustomed to the near-panic that accompanied it now. He took a lot of walks in the evening, yes, but he didn't generally come back from them out of breath, let alone wild-eyed with fresh terror. "Are you hurt?"

"No, no, but I saw something. A big something, landing in the eastern outskirts. I think it was a Giygan ship."

"What?" Maxwell cried out, turning away from the camp stove where he was working on the dinner stir-fry. "Giygan? Tony, you've got to be kidding!"

"I'm not." Tony took a deep breath. "You know we had enemies back in Winters! Well, Buzz Buzz did, anyway. Maybe it was the tests, or maybe it was the psychic stuff, but they've found us here. I bet you anything that's a strike team coming to take care of us!"

"Wait," said Tracy. "Stay calm. Look, if you're sure this is what's happening, is there any way we can cut them off at the pass? I know there were more improvements you two wanted to make, but maybe this is the time to go live."

"Tracy, are you certain?" Maxwell clicked the stove off and stepped forward. "It'd be your life on the line here. We don't have Buzz Buzz Mk. II ready to go, so you'd have to use the miniaturized drone. There's no reason it shouldn't work with the new transfer technology, but if something goes wrong..."

"Then we're still doomed. As Mr. Trask put it, I'd rather die trying to fight than die on my knees. Are you two with me?"

The two men glanced at each other, and then, as one, they nodded. "Let's go," said Tony. "Before they get here."

Tracy stood up, patting her pocket to make sure the stone was still there, then strode to the door; the men were only a step behind. Outside, the night was illuminated by a ghastly false sunrise. Through the trees, the eastern side of Onett was lit with the eerie glow of Giygan electronics, and Tracy could barely make out the flashes of silver: robots, of some variety or another, coming for them.

Tracy broke into a run, but it still seemed to take an eternity to reach the work clearing, where the time machine sat dormant and waiting. She ran to the side of the tiny drone she'd become so used to, gently placing the Sound Stone in its cargo compartment, and then lunged for the pilot's chair. "Please! We haven't got any time to lose."

"I know!" cried Maxwell at the controls, typing desperately. "Okay, I think I've got a coordinate lock. Onett, May 1999, the top of the hill right next to the meteor. Booting up the gate now!" Meanwhile, Tony fastened the straps and receivers with shaking hands as the metallic footsteps drew closer.

"I... all right," said Tracy. "I'm ready. I don't know if I'll ever see you two again. If I don't - thank you, and good luck."

"No, save your luck," said Tony, very softly. "You'll need it. Godspeed."

"Got it." Tracy closed her eyes, biting her lip as the consciousness-transfer electrodes wormed into her mind. This was quite nearly an automated process now, thankfully. Just breathe, focus, and wait -

And then she was the drone, and she was racing for the gate, and she was gone.

* * *

And then she was home.

After the flash of the gate closing, Tracy quickly gathered her wits about her, taking in the Onett night. All around her was a healed world - or, rather, a world that had yet to be hurt, where the trees lived and the skies weren't clouded with toxic smoke. This was the hill as she remembered it, a peaceful place in the moonlight, and just being there was like nothing she'd felt in years.

But it wasn't just the hill, was it? It was the three boys standing before her, staring with wonder. They were scruffier than she remembered them, but they were infinitely more real: the cowering shape of Pokey, muttering something about a bee; the smaller Picky, tired but not half as frightened as his brother; and, in front of them, Ness, looking like he'd been drawn from her dreams. Even in the drone body, there was a rush of pure human joy that came with seeing them again, and it was hard to hold herself together. She had to remember the plan; she had to stick to the script, not just let her mouth run.

"A bee," she began, with a pointed glance at Pokey, "I am not. I'm from 10 years in the future, and in the future, all is devastation." It felt so stilted, but she had to make it sound important, didn't she? "Giygas, the universal cosmic destroyer, sent all to the horror of eternal darkness." Tracy paused for effect, watching the look of confused intrigue settle onto Ness's face. "However, you must listen! Where I am from, there is a well-known legend that has been handed down from ancient times. It says, 'when the chosen boy reaches the point, he will find the light. The passing of time will shatter the nightmare rock and will reveal the path of light.' You see, it is my opinion that you are that boy, Ness. This I believe."

Behind Ness, Picky mumbled something, and Pokey gestured for him to shush. Ness, meanwhile, just nodded slowly. "Um, okay. But... but why are you here?"

_Because this is the night it all begins,_ she desperately wanted to say, but she forced herself back into character. "Giygas's monstrous plan must have been set in motion somewhere on Earth," Tracy continued. "If you start to confront the enemy immediately, you may have time to counter the evil intentions of Giygas. Three things are of the utmost importance: wisdom, courage, and friendship."

"Friendship? You mean I won't be the only one fighting these guys?"

"The legends from the ancient times tell of three boys and a girl who defeat Giygas," said Tracy, trying to make it sound like something other than wishful thinking. "... I will tell you more later. Go now! And do not be anxious about the future. You have much work to do, Ness."

"I..." said Ness. "I believe it. Doesn't make any sense, but I believe it."

This was her brother, all right, and for a moment, Tracy almost felt guilty for tricking him this way. "Thank you for listening to my long story. You are as exceptional as I expected you to be. Now, let me accompany you home." She took a protective position in front of Ness; as ludicrous as it was for the tiny drone body to be guarding him, it only felt right.

Behind her, she could hear Pokey asking Ness something in his harsh stage whisper, something about the three boys and hopefully not being one of them. _No,_ she wanted to answer. _All you'll do is run away, break your mother's heart, and leave your little brother wondering for the rest of his life._ It was strange, though; as much as she wanted to be angry, somehow she couldn't manage it. Maybe it was just the fact of seeing him again, so young and frightened, but she realized that Pokey didn't know any better than the rest of them what was going to happen. And why shouldn't he be afraid? She would have been, in his place.

None of this mattered, though, Tracy reminded herself. All that mattered was getting Ness safe and getting the Sound Stone delivered. Forcing thoughts of the past from her mind, she began to lead the boys down the winding path towards home.

* * *

She should have known it wouldn't be that easy.

They were nearly down the hill when the flash came, along with a crackling noise like lightning. Once the light had cleared, the shape blocking the path couldn't be clearer: a small Starman, but most definitely a Starman. They'd been intercepted! She'd known the armies had been on their way, but dammit, she'd hoped they'd beaten them!

"It's been a long time, Buzz Buzz," the Starman began in its low, metallic drone. "You've been successful at foiling Master Giygas's plans, but now, Buzz Buzz, you must surrender! You're no longer a hero. You're just a useless insect. I'll stomp you hard!" God, how did that monotone manage to sound angry? She didn't have the time to think about it, though - the thing was lunging...

_No! Not now!_

The scream snapped something in Tracy's mind into place, and something purple shimmered in the air between her and the charging Starman. Something psychic? She didn't know, but whatever it was, it had emboldened the boys behind her. Ness stepped up to take a swing at the Starman's leg with his baseball bat, clanging off the metal, and Picky delivered a spirited but ineffective kick. The Starman made a mechanical grinding noise, and before Tracy could get back between it and Ness, fire erupted from its visor. God, no -

By the time Tracy could register the dulled heat, the flames had already washed over them and dissolved, the purple shimmer absorbing them. Normally, Tracy might have wondered just what it was she had done, but there wasn't any time for wonder now. Unthinking, she barreled towards the Starman, hoping desperately that the weight of the drone might be able to budge it. If she could get it off the path, maybe that'd give the boys enough time to run for it. She slammed into the Starman heavily, expecting to feel her carapace crumple, but it was the Starman's shell that gave, and the creature staggered, only barely keeping its balance.

So it was weaker than it looked, then? Good. With grim satisfaction, Tracy spun back enough to slam into it again, pleased to watch another section of the Starman's plating give way. Picky scrambled back towards Pokey, and Ness held the line as another blast of fire issued from the Starman's visor. Once again, the psychic shield absorbed it, although now the glow around them began to waver. Tracy tried to focus - what if she needed to do that again? - but with a final, rattling whir, the Starman slumped and was still.

"Whew!" Tracy couldn't help but let the facade slip a bit. "I was taking a big chance there. He came from 10 years in the future to kill me, so we can't relax yet!"

"What was that?" cried Picky. "Some kind of robot? Did... was that Giygas?"

Oh, if only, thought Tracy, but she merely made a small, negating sound. "From now on, you'll be fighting enemies sent by Giygas, as well as humans who have evil thoughts. They'll definitely make trouble for you on your adventure! Also, animals are becoming violent due to Giygas's influence over the evil in their minds!"

Even from his position behind Picky, Pokey managed to sneer. "You gotta be kidding me! Evil animals and robots and stuff? Shyeah, right!"

"It is the truth," intoned Tracy, "so listen!" With that, Pokey was thankfully silent, and Tracy began to lead the way again down the path. The houses were within sight now, so new and fresh-looking; had she really once taken this for granted? Did they still? Even in the dark, the colors of the paint were startling. The Minches had repainted every summer before G-Day, and the paint looked almost wet.

Tracy nearly opened the door herself before she caught herself, letting Pokey lead the way into the Minches' living room. Inside, in the light, the vibrant blue checkered carpet was almost blinding - and even stranger were the Minches, well and alive. Aloysius was in his usual position on the couch, while Lardna paced the floor in front of him. As they entered, she looked up, wearing an expression of exasperated alarm that Tracy vaguely recalled from childhood. "Where in sam hill have you boys been?"

"Uh, M-Mom," stammered Pokey, "we were just, uh, Picky ran up the hill..."

"I'll have to think of a suitable punishment!" replied Lardna; her tone wasn't gentle, but Tracy'd spent enough years with her after G-Day to recognize the undertones of relief there. Aloysius, on the other hand, only looked irritated as he stood up to regard his sons. He turned to Ness, then, shaking his head.

"I'm really sorry my sons troubled you so much," he said, every bit the coward Tracy remembered: the coward who'd left them all to die, who'd probably died somewhere miserable down the line himself. But here he was, oblivious, and in a way, it was beautiful. Tracy prayed he'd never know how it could have been. "Both of you are really going to get it now!" It didn't take any more prompting; Pokey fled towards the boys' rooms, Picky hot on his heels, and Aloysius followed shortly thereafter.

Why wasn't she angry? Shouldn't she be? Picky'd lived under this petty tyrant's shadow all his childhood, and God knew she'd been angry on his behalf back then... but now it was all so quaint, and the marvel of just seeing them all alive again was enough to soften her mood. Aloysius was a tyrant, but he wasn't much more than a single little man, and after Giygas, human cruelty seemed almost worth it just to see humans again. If only she could just be honest: just say "look, this is Tracy, and I've come from a world where you're all dead and I'm probably not far behind, and maybe I'll change that, but more than anything I just need to say that I love you all, because you're alive and you're normal, and that's incredible, and..."

"Ayaaaeee!"

The shout frightened Tracy out of her reverie, and she reeled back to find Lardna looming over her with a... flyswatter? At the drone's scale, it looked freakishly huge and shockingly dangerous. "I think it's a dung beetle!" screamed Lardna. "I'll smash your guts out!" God, no, what -

The swatter fell. Something in Tracy's vision fuzzed as one of the drone's wings sheared off, and she started a pitifully slow descent to the ground. How...? She must have been damaged fighting that Starman; the drone wasn't built for heavy duty, let alone combat. But this didn't make any sense. A flyswatter?

But she'd gotten this far, and she had to finish her work, even as the world began to go out of focus around her. Ness was crouched by her side, thankfully, and the Minches had already stopped paying attention. "Agh! ... I was much weaker than I thought. So now you must begin your adventure..." iWithout me to see you through,/i she tried to say, but it came out as a choked "see... you..." Tracy forced herself back into the moment, forced the voice synthesizer to keep working. "Listen to my final words!"

Next to her, Ness was still and silent, and she took that as assent. "To defeat Giygas, your own power must unite with the Earth's. The Earth will then channel your power and multiply it. There are eight points that you must visit. Make these places your own. Each of these places is your sanctuary! One of them is near Onett. It's called Giant Step. Go there first. Do you understand?" Ness just nodded, and Tracy braced herself again.

"You are a very intelligent young man, and -" With a fizzle, something in the drone's thorax died, and a jolt passed through her as her vision dimmed. "Oh! The pain! ... Everything is getting dark... before I pass on, I need to give you something. It is the Sound Stone. It records the melodies of your eight sanctuaries. It's an awesome item..." The compartment in the drone's abdomen opened, and the Sound Stone softly fell to the floor. Cautiously, Ness picked it up; even with her vision giving out, Tracy could sense the rightness of it in his hand.

All around her, the world was getting dreamier, less real, and soon the last twinges of pain were gone. Was this what it felt like to die? Or was this what it felt like to succeed? They'd talked about it a few times, what success would mean to their timeline. Was this her version of the future, and her, evaporating? She'd never know; she'd never get back to the base, never see Maxwell and Tony again. Tracy could only hope that, whatever was happening to them, it was as peaceful as it was for her now. Even through the haze, she could see everything: Ness, the Minches, the room, all the colors. There was dim light coming through the window. Had they made it to morning?

"It's already dawn outside," she said, synthesizer weak now. "I'm fading fast. Go, Ness."

"Okay," Ness replied, and Tracy thought she could see his face wavering. She wished she had the strength left to tell him not to cry. They'd made it through; dawn was coming again to a bright Onett, and there was nobody in the world she trusted more than him. She'd done it. They'd done it. _Good luck,_ she thought, as if Ness could hear her now, _and goodbye._

The light from the window grew, filling Tracy's sphere of vision, and then all was white and still.


	6. Epilogue: Another Time, Another Place

**Epilogue: Another Time, Another Place**

God, Maxwell needed a weekend.

Specifically, he thought, he needed to put the last week out of his mind, but it had been one that was hard not to revisit and pick at, like a scab. They'd been running stress tests all week on the new polymer, and the results had been dismal; every computer model of expected behavior had been wrong, right down to the temperature tolerances. They were going to have to scrap the modeling program, and if he couldn't think of a way to improve the heat resistance, they'd have to scrap the polymer too. Maybe if they added some metallics to the formula, but at that point, the production cost would get prohibitive...

Wait, hadn't he just told himself he didn't want to think about this? Maxwell shook his head as he stepped through the lobby of his apartment building and towards the mailbox nook. It was about the time of the month for magazines, and a few puzzles would give his mind something to chew on besides itself. He withdrew his keys from his pocket and unlocked his mailbox; inside, as he'd hoped, was his pencil-puzzles magazine, along with the Snow Wood alumni bulletin below it, and, between them, a plain white envelope. Huh. Did he have a bank statement due? His bills were paid up, weren't they?

Maxwell reached in to grab his mail, sliding the envelope to the top. It wasn't corporate at all: addressed in blue ink in an unfamiliar hand, with a return address somewhere in Eagleland and the marks of priority air mail. If this was a marketing gimmick, it was an aggressive one, all right. He tucked the mail into his bag, relocking his mailbox carefully before heading to the stairwell.

Three flights of stairs and one length of hallway later, Maxwell sighed in relief as he slumped down on his couch. Now, it was time to throw something on the stereo and have a beer - but first, he thought, it was time to open that letter. He grabbed the boxcutter he kept on his side table, carefully slitting the envelope open and withdrawing the contents.

Inside were a few folded sheets of ancient-looking looseleaf, yellowed and ragged around the edges, and a plain index card. The card was written in the same handwriting as the envelope, and Maxwell scanned it quickly, hoping for an explanation:

_Dear Mr. Labs,_

_My name is Tracy Wagner. If you're wondering if you know me, you don't, but my brother is friends with one of your old schoolmates, and that's how I got your address. I found this letter in some of my old papers, and I'm pretty sure it's yours. Before you ask: I'm not sure what it is, either. I just know that I think you need to read it._

_TW_

Either this was a hoax, or someone was doing one hell of an art project. Maxwell carefully unfolded the sheets of looseleaf, eyes widening as he took in the handwriting on the first page. There was something faintly off about it, but it was still definitely _his,_ or a careful forger's. He began to read:

_Hello, me -_

_No, this isn't a joke. It's not an art project, either. Just keep reading._

Well, Goddamn. Even if this wasn't a letter from himself, someone had spent enough effort pretending that it was worth his time anyway, and he had the growing suspicion that this was authentic. Maxwell obeyed.

_It's going to be hard to explain this, but I want you to bear with me,_ the letter continued. _I come from Hell, basically. I'm you from the world where Giygas won. If you get this - if there's a you to read this - it means my friends and I changed that. This is going to get into time-travel theory, so you may want to take notes..._

_

* * *

_

It wasn't that it didn't make sense, Tony decided. It was that it all made too much sense.

He pushed his chair back until it hit the wall, giving him just enough space to stretch his legs. On most days, Tony resented the little converted closet the department had given him as an office, but today it was good to have the privacy to think about the letter he'd received. After a half-hour of trying to convince himself he was looking at a fake, he'd forced himself to accept that the document was real: an honest-to-goodness letter from a version of himself on some other timeline, and a thoroughly-broken version of himself at that.

But why shouldn't the author of that letter be broken? Back when Jeff had been gone, Tony had tried his best to convince himself not to worry, but of course he would have been shattered if anything had happened to him. In his alter-self's timeline, the worst had happened, and then the world had turned into a nightmare. Why shouldn't he have gone mad? If it had been himself in his alter's place - no, Tony corrected himself, it already had been. That was the nature of alter-selves, after all, if the boffins in the Temporal Physics department were as right as the letter made them look.

It all made perfect sense, but that still didn't make it easier to read the letter, in its messy scrawl and terrible familiarity. Tony leaned back over the desk to try and take another look at the passage where he'd had to stop, halfway down the second page:

_We were - I was - we were heroes, you know, as Buzz Buzz, and we built all the machines, so maybe Maxwell was right all along and I was more than I thought I was, and I don't know where you are whenever you are, but maybe you understand how much you really do have. Even if you lost Jeff, and I hope you didn't, but maybe you did, I don't know, you still have fresh food, and sunlight, and plants, and your mind. Our mind. Maxwell always tried to tell me I had a good mind, but I didn't believe him, didn't really trust him, even though he was right, I guess. I just hope you appreciate it, because maybe you can be the me I never was._

"I'm sorry," Tony murmured to the self he could only imagine, the man who'd sat on the floor of a hovel thousands of miles from home and written about his envy of someone he'd never meet. That Tony had thrown the scraps of his life away on a crazy plan, and who could blame him? A hope was a hope, even if you'd never see the benefits, and he owed the life he had to his alter and two others being willing to follow that hope.

"Thanks, Tony," he continued as he began to reverently refold the letter. He'd keep reading later, maybe once he got home; as uncomfortable as it was to read, he owed his alter-self that much. It didn't even come close to repaying the debt, but it was something, and it was the least he could do.

* * *

"Look, Ness, I don't know what to tell you about this time-capsule thing. I'm grateful to you and Jeff for those addresses, but when it comes to the stuff I sent, what can I say? I'm still figuring out the stuff in there that was for me. Just - I don't know, have Jeff give them my number if they're freaking out? ... Thanks. Really grateful for your help, Ness. Tell Paula I said hi, okay? Love you. Bye."

Tracy hung up the phone, sitting down on her bed and sighing. She'd gotten the care package from her mother a month ago, complete with the "time capsule" Mom'd found in the basement, and ever since then the contents of that envelope had never been far from her mind. The letters inside had told an unbelievable story, but it had all rung true, especially after she'd asked her brother about some of the details. As impossible as it was, she'd eventually been forced to conclude the "time capsule" really was from some alternate timeline, one where she'd lived through the end of the world and died to unmake it.

The letter was still sitting on her desk, and Tracy hadn't gone a day without rereading it. It was nearly impossible to recognize herself in the writer, but there were clear flashes of her thinking that she couldn't ignore. The woman who'd written the letter was worn down from years of tragedy and deprivation, but she'd still remembered the past that the two Tracies had shared, and she'd still dreamed of better. There was one passage that had stuck with her:

_Picky and I used to talk about what things should have been like, if things were normal. We talked about school: our old elementary school, then middle and high school, and then college. As he got sicker, we lived more and more in those stories, and I realize now that you're really experiencing what we dreamed about. I hope you live to read this in a world where you're just a college girl, a sophomore or a junior by now, and I hope you and Picky are having fun. We could only pretend to be young after a while. I hope you still are._

It made Tracy grateful for what she had, but it also made her guilty. After she'd gone to Fourside and Picky started his photojournalism program in Merrysville, they'd drifted out of contact. They'd accepted it as the inevitable cost of not going to the same school, but reading about the other timeline's version of him - who'd missed his family, dreamed of college, and died at 20 - made her miss Picky. Besides, she thought, he needed to know about this.

Tracy picked up her phone again, clicking through her directory until she found Picky's number. He answered on the second ring, voice cheerful enough that she suspected she wasn't the only one who felt guilty about how long it had been since they'd talked. "Hey! Tracy! What's up?"

"Picky," she said, smiling unconsciously. "Hey. There's something I have to tell you..."


End file.
